Welcome to the Game On! guide at TV.com. This situation comedy related the adventures and frustrations of three flat-sharing twenty-somethings. Matthew (Ben Chaplin, Neil Stuke), the landlord, is a fantasist and bully, intolerant of ginger people and students, and whose severe agoraphobia means he cannot leave the flat. Martin (Matthew Cottle) is a red-headed bank clerk, whose insecurities and passivity make him a doormat for Matthew, whom he has known since school. Mandy (Samantha Janus) is an old friend of Martin's older sister. Attractive and sexually promiscuous, she seeks validation through a series of short-lived sexual liaisons. In the second series Martin finally gets a girlfriend in the form of Clare, a student nurse, while Mandy introduces Matthew to Jason, a psychologist, in an attempt to address her flatmates phobia. In the third series Mandy finally finds love, and gets engaged to her boss, Archie. Neil Stuke, who lost out to Ben Chaplin when the show was first cast, replaced him in the role of Matthew from the second series. The theme tune is "Where I Find My Heaven" by the Gigolo Aunts.moreless

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Quotes (20)

Mandy: Research your own pants Ron Grimshaw.

Matt: I expect you'll be researching author's underpants and their contents?

Mandy: What the hell were you playing at at 4 o' clock this morning?
Matt: What is this, a shagging nunnery or something?
Martin: I wouldn't mind living in a shagging nunnery...
Matt: I couldn't sleep alright? I suffer from insomnia.
Martin: I think it must be the idea of shagging the nuns that makes it seem so attractive.

Martin: I was just lying in bed wondering why women loathe and despise me and suddenly I was wide awake.

Matt: Chris is the kind of name a turd would have if turds had names.

Matt: In the life of man there are times and there are seasons. There is a time to surf and there is a time to wax your board. And I'm not just talking about surfing.

Matt: I don't know what his name was, it was something Northern like, Arthur Black Pudding.

Martin: Girls do look at me, it's just the conversation and the knobbing they seem a bit reluctant about.

Notes (8)

Sunset Beach Watch:
Matt and Martin have missed the beginning of Sunset Beach, so they don't know whether Oregon chose to go to the Prom with Brett or Jay

Mandy owes Matt 6 months rent (around £2,000).

Both The Big Breakfast and Jono Coleman feature in the morning TV montage.

Martin fancies a German girl at his office called Renata.

Martin works in a bank.

Sunset Beach Watch:
According to Martin "It's the one where Brett tells Jay he thinks he's gay so Jay beats him up".

Dogs Bollox review of Pro-Active gig
In the unpromising environs of The Spotted Dog, Battersea, new band, Pro-Active took us through the pain barrier into a totally new dimension.

Fusing trip-hammer rock with performance art, lead singer, Matthew Mallone doesn't sing, he sobs, he screams, he jibbers. He enacts all the pain and poverty and deprivation and utter lack of meaning in a post-modern, ethnically-cleansed, terminally infected universe. The man is clearly insane - a star is born.

Trivia (8)

The song featured in this episode is, 'Stuck in the middle with you' by Stealer's Wheel. It reached No. 8 in the U.K. Top 40 in May 1973.

The song played over the end credits is, 'From despair to where,' by , Manic Street Preachers. It reached No. 25 in the U.K. Top 40 in June 1993.

Pro-Active lyrics
You ask me how I feel,
When it's months and months,
Since I last had a hot meal,
They cut me off cos I couldn't pay the bill,
And now I'm ill,
Man,
Yeah I'm ill man,
I'm feeling really rough.

Pro-Active lyrics
Matt: I'm on the streets,
I'm I the gutter,
How do I get my bread and butter?
In the cold you see me shudder,
Any spare change you hear me mutter,
In the windows of your eyes,
You've pulled down the shutter,
You to your wife,
It's just some nutter,
Quick cross the road I hear you utter,
Piss off home then,
Ignore my splutter,
I'm on the streets,
I'm in the gutter,
It's year since I've had bread and butter

Barney is 48th in line to the throne.

Matt's band is called Pro-Active. The guitarist is called The Fury and the drummer is called Hookman.

Hookman's real name is Giles.

Matt's tennis rackett was designed by the "bloke who designed the concord" .

Allusions (10)

Martin: Martin Jagger.
Mick Jagger is the lead singer of The Rolling Stones. He's also rather rubbery.

Martin: Martin DeNiro.
Robert De Niro is an American actor.

Mandy: Well it's a bloody dear place the Savoy.
The Savoy is a 5-star hotel in London.

Martin: Big Wednesday.
A surfing film made in 1978.

Matt : Eye of the Tiger.
Theme song from Rocky, the famous boxing film with Sylvester Stallone. Recorded by Survivor it reached No 1 in the U.K. Top 40 in July 1982.

Mandy: Satisfied Miss Haversham?
A character from Great Expectations - a novel by Charles Dickens.
Miss Haversham was jilted by her lover on their wedding day and spent the rest of her life in her dress surrounded by the wedding banquet.